About this project

This is For You: A Chapbook of Gender-Free Love Poetry

$629

pledged of $500 goal

30

backers

Hasn't everyone written a love poem for someone? Well, I wrote a chapbook of it for everyone. "This is For You" is a collection of love and erotic poetry written entirely without gender pronouns. For the girl who wants to read a poem to her guy, for the guy who wants to read to his guy, for a guy to read to his gal, for a gal to read to her gal, for the genderqueer to read to whoever they want to. The book's epigraph by Ferlinghetti, "Poetry has no gender, but isn't sexless," sums it up a little more succinctly.

I've been writing and performing poetry for over a decade at open mics, poetry slams, on the radio, in classrooms, and featured at Christmas festivals and reading series. I've been known to jump on stage at live music and comedy events to turn them into art happenings and seen on corners and beaches yelling poetry at passerby. I've had a handful of poems published including one of the poems in this book, a haiku about a kiss, recently published on SpitJournal.com, but I've yet to publish a collection of my work.

“This” started as a massive manuscript without focus and found its way to a beautiful and much larger purpose though it shrank significantly in the process. While I plan to publish a full book length collection of my work soon, this idea is too important to not complete first. Love poems have been written without gender pronouns before scattered throughout literature, but there has never existed a collection like this designed to be so inclusive and relatable to literally anyone who has ever been in love.

Risks and challenges

The book is as complete as possible, formatted and ready for the printer I've selected. The last step is funding for printing and an ISBN. With much thanks to Alexander Noelke for his hands and tools on cover design, this project has become my vision of the perfect pocket sized gift of love and now I just need your help to bring it into the world.

The biggest challenge with any self-publishing venture is getting the word out to market your book. While this campaign is up, I'll be posting it across social media #hashtagging away and tweeting @ the many communities I believe this book will benefit. If you too believe in this example of the equality of love, I invite you to help by doing the same.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $25 or more
About $25

Supporters who pledge at this level will receive a signed copy of “This Is For You” with a hand written additional poem tucked inside that also has no gender pronouns, but I didn't think quite fit. You decide.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $100 or more
About $100

Supporters who pledge at this level will receive a signed and annotated copy of "This Is For You" when it is released with the names and possibly stories of the people the poems were written for (you might be surprised).